Oh CyanogenMod, let us count the ways we love thee. If we were to actually count, 5 million and change would probably be your stopping point— but thankfully we don’t have to count because CyanogenMod has done it for us. Using the latest report from the CyanogenMod statistics feature, the total number of installs has climbed to 5,071,645. What is especially interesting is the number of official installs of 1,881,796 v.s. 3,189,849 unofficial installs. There is a slight skew there, but it makes sense if you think about it. For example, I remember my Epic 4G Touch or Sprint S II doesn’t have an officially supported CyanogenMod ROM, but there are a few unofficial ones floating around out there.

CyanogenMod has gone through many changes during its time and this number represents their dedication to their fans and the Android community. My hat is off to the CyanogenMod team, congratulations and excellent job. Not to leave out the fans, because they deserve congratulations too. This accomplishment wouldn’t be achieved if it wasn’t for their love of CyanogenMod and their dedication to the ROM. Do you use CyanogenMod as your daily driver? If so tell us what you love most about CyanogenMod in the Comments section below.

One of the hottest families of custom ROMs out there these days is the Android Open Kang Project (AOKP). With over 30 builds under their belt since late last year, the project has now reached Milestone 5. What does that mean? Basically, when enough features and fixes have been added to the project to merit an official release marker, it’s called a Milestone. These builds are the recommended builds for those who don’t flash the less stable nightly builds.

Last week we reported that the most recent Chrome Beta update broke compatibility for some custom Android 4.0 ROMs. The update proved to be beneficial on devices that are running stock ICS so I wanted to figure out a way to get it up and running on my rooted Galaxy Tab 10.1 running a CM9 kang. Apparently some of the custom ROMs have a build.id and display.id that reflect an Android version other than ICS even though they actually run Android 4.0. There is a simple workaround for this and I will give you a quick walk-through in the video below. Basically you will just need to make sure your build.id and display.id read IML74K.

If the thought of editing your build.prop file sounds daunting to you, maybe you should just wait until the developer updates the ROM in the future. If this sounds like something you can handle then check out the video and let us know in the comments if it worked and what ROM you are running. By the way, anything you do to your device is at your own risk, myself or Talk Android will not be held responsible for any problems you may encounter. Happy hacking! :-D

If you are anything like me you must be getting excited to see ICS first hand, not only in person, but on your very own device. Not every one is going to be able to run out and purchase the new Galaxy Nexus and some can hardly wait for the official ICS update to roll-out for scheduled devices.

The peeps over at XDA have taken the wait away for you brave Nexus S owners who are willing to port an early unofficial build. The build is pretty close to the real thing but it is definitely not official. This build is based on an earlier version of ICS and some of the new Android 4.0 features are missing. There have been reports of minor issues ones that by no means make the device unusable: a few of the new icons are missing, NFC is a bust, the camera might have some glitches, and this build is sans facial recognition.

If you have a rooted device and are familiar with flashing ROM’s you may want to give this a whirl, if not I suggest just waiting it out a couple more weeks until Google pushes out the official release. Reports are saying that for an unofficial port it is super stable so if you’ve got a brass set and want to give it a try, hit the link below. Remember, anything YOU do to YOUR phone is at YOUR own risk!

Now that we have the official bootstrap apps and an easy root method, ROMs for the DROID Bionic and DROID 3 will start coming out like wildfire. We present you with the first two; Unleashed for the Bionic and Steel Droid for the DROID 3. They have been de-bloated, include tweaks to build.props, and run on the latest firmware. This is only the beginning as we should see a lot more over the next few weeks.

Recently HTC started locking their devices only to later announce that they will allow users to unlock them. Everyone rejoiced, but is it what everyone expected?

They recently started allowing users to unlock the Sensation and EVO 3D bootloader through the HTCDev tool, but they are not granting S-off status. which unlocks the ability to flash things like radios and hboot versions.

HTC’s method gives you the ability to flash a modified version of a custom recovery, which will let you flash the files needed to root your phone. Of course you will be able to run apps that require root and have read/write permissions. If that is all you wanted to do than HTC’s method is great.

If you think you want to do more, it might make sense to wait. It is possible that the development community will figure out how to flash ROMs using HTC’s tool, and there might be a chance the boot partition can be flashed. Since HTC has made it impossible to go back after using their tool, you should wait and see what lies ahead.

There are also rumors that HTC will eventually give S-Off status, but that is completely unknown. Stay tuned.

TalkAndroid would like to give a big Congratulations to the CyanogenMod team for reaching the 500,000 milestone. Their commitment to the development community has always been top notch. At this time there are officially 505,756 users (378,240 official and 127,516 unofficial or “kangs”).

Right now CM’s growth is about 4,000 users each day, which is amazing since the custom ROM community is not something that is adopted by mainstream device owners. With 550,000 Android activations per day, there is no question it is a small community, but it is a strong one. Any predictions on when the one millionth customer will be served?

We reported yesterday that the leaked Gingerbread build for the Motorola Atrix could be unlocked. Using the files from the leaked build, Android tweakers have figured out a way to unlock everyone’s Atrix.

There are some that believe that Motorola never intended to unlock the bootloader with the Gingerbread release and there are others who say they have confirmation from Motorola that they will. We will find out for sure in the near future, but for now if you have an Atrix you can start loading custom ROM’s

Motorola has been promising unlocked bootloaders, but not until later in the year. We also never expected that they would unlock existing phones.

We reported that a leak of a Gingerbread update surfaced, but we just found out that it will allow users to unlock the bootloader using the traditional command: “fastboot oem unlock.” The update is expected in July and when users receive that update they will be able to boot their Atrix into Fastboot mode and unlock from there.

Anyone who pickled up the HTC Thunderbolt must be getting happier by the day that they did. With all the rooting, and bloatware removal tutorials going out now, there’s really only one more thing missing…custom ROMs for the Thunderbolt. Now that HTC has released the source kernel for the Thunderbolt, it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing some nice custom ROM jobs make their way out, for us to tell you about them as soon as they do!